The Greater Green Screen: Our Rating System for Eco-Friendly Products

Ever wonder how natural some of your household and personal products are? Are you looking for a way to compare various products in terms of naturalness and eco-friendliness? Then check out The Greater Green Screen, our exclusive rating system.

Our Rating System
Each product that we sell is rated according to The Greater Green Screen, a system that gives a total possible 5 stars for "greenness"- that is, how natural, pure, organic, Fair Trade, biodegradable, non-toxic, and overall safe for both you and the environment each product is. We do not sell any products that receive lower than a 3-star rating.

How We Rate Our Products
The first thing we do when we are creating a rating for a new product is to look at individual ingredients. A sure sign of a natural product is a full ingredients list. Every natural and organic product will have full disclosure of ingredients somewhere on their packaging. That is one of the fundamental signs of a green product. Unfortunately, manufacturers of household cleaners are not obligated to disclose full ingredients lists. Even on the required Materials & Safety Data Sheets (MSDS), manufacturers often only list a class of ingredients, rather than specific chemicals, to purportedly "protect their patented formulas".

One of the best resources out there for checking on specific ingredients is the Environmental Working Group's Skin Deep Cosmetic Safety Database. We use this database to check on questionable ingredients when we come across them in products, and to get second opinions on the safety of particular products. Overall, we have found them to be an excellent resource on the safety of thousands of cosmetic products and ingredients. If there is a product we have not rated, we encourage you to check out the database for yourself.

Next, we look at the manufacturer's eco-print: that is, how ecologically-minded a company is when it comes to environmental concerns, labor policies, energy use, and packaging materials. Because corporations have a much larger environmental impact than individuals do, it is very important to us to support companies that are leaving as small a carbon footprint as possible while doing their utmost to make our world a better place.

Finally, we consider the amount of resources needed to produce a product, how much recycled material was used, and a capacity to biodegrade over time. After we have considered all of these factors, we give a product a rating on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 green stars being the best possible rating. A typical deduction is one half point per "issue"- for example, if we find a synthetic ingredient in a product that easily could have been replaced with a gentler, more natural alternative, that product would have one half of a star deducte

What if a Product Doesn't List Its Ingredients?
We at The Greater Green believe in full disclosure of all ingredients, so that we can be informed consumers making informed decisions as to the chemicals we are surrounding ourselves with. We also believe that if a company will not disclose all ingredients, than there is most likely something to hide. Therefore, we do not carry any products that do not disclose ingredients on their label/packaging.

The Greater Green Screen is a copyrighted trademark of The Greater Green, LLC, 2007.